His confirmation caused little debate, except among anti-abortion activists who decried Diaz’s support for Obama last fall. Diaz said he is “pro-life” and supports finding a common ground on the issue of abortion.

“I am very grateful to the Senate for this confirmation and to President Obama for the confidence he has invested in me,” he said in the statement Tuesday. “I am honored to be given the responsibility of representing the people of the United States to the Holy See.”

Fellow Minnesotan Sam Kaplan was also confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday for ambassador to Morocco.

Diaz is a board member of the Catholic Theological Society and previously served as president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians. He also wrote “On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives” and edited “From the Heart of Our People: Latino/a Explorations in Catholic Systemic Theology.”

A Cuban-American, Diaz has built bridges between Latino communities and the Catholic church. He would be the first Latino ambassador to the Vatican from the United States.

But his nomination is sparking outcry from conservative Catholics because Diaz is not “pro-life” enough.

Diaz hasn’t weighed in on the issue of abortion very often. Last year, he told the Catholic News Agency, “Wherever we can, we should advance life at all stages.”

Lifesitenews.com, a clearinghouse for anti-abortion news, said Diaz “reportedly is pro-life but has compromised his views by backing Obama and others.”

The site continued, “That someone like Diaz can claim to follow the pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church and assist an abortion advocate in becoming president won’t go unnoticed as the Senate confirmation process takes place.”

The conservative Catholic League said, “It is a sad commentary on the Democratic party that out of the entire country they can’t field a candidate to represent the U.S. to the Vatican who is unequivocally opposed to abortion-on-demand.”

In the same breath the group said, “In choosing professor Miguel H. Diaz to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, President Obama has selected a man whose writings do not address such hot-button issues as abortion.”

Diaz is expected to have a swift confirmation in the U.S. Senate.

PZ Myers (Wikipedia)

While Catholic bishops and priests can hear confessions about sins as severe as murder or genocide, the Vatican’s 830-year-old Apostolic Penitentiary is “reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious,” writes the UK’s Telegraph. In Rome this week, this secretive “tribunal of conscience” held a two-day panel to discuss what it does and how it works. Crimes so grave they can only be absolved by the pope include attempting to assassinate the pontiff, directly participating in (or funding) abortion or desecrating the Eucharist. The inclusion of that last sin seems to put University of Minnesota professor PZ Myers in a worse class of sinner, in the eyes of Catholics, than genocidal dictators. The Telegraph even mentions the atheist biology professor, who blogged about his desecration of a communion wafer last summer, although it’s not clear from the article whether his case was specifically discussed by the Apostolic Penitentiary:

Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.

In July last year an American academic, to make a point about freedom of thought and religion, drove a nail through a Communion wafer and then threw it in a rubbish bin.

Paul Myers, from the University of Minnesota, said later: “I pierced it with a rusty nail. Then I simply threw it in the trash. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your Lord.”

Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.

Blogging about the news yesterday, Myers asked, “But how can I be excommunicated from a church to which I’ve never belonged?”